Sunday, April 14, 2019

People and Work in Palermo

I know that people are always working in Viterbo and at home in the States, too.  I see the tailor sewing at the cleaners, and the people in the kitchen at Thayer slicing potatoes, and men drilling holes in the roads and paving the streets.  But something about Sicily brought work right into the forefront of life.  Maybe it's because we weren't also working; we were in a space of just observing and being present, looking around rather than getting to the next destination.  Everything felt close-up, and I noticed real life happening not behind closed doors.  It was beautiful.  Sure, go in a church or palace and see the Byzantine art and mosaics, but walk the streets and see the people on a corner fixing a light, or in a doorway rolling dough, or at the counter making the pizza or at the stand outside the hotel taking the fish from the ice, weighing it, and putting it into a bag for you, or at the grill cooking up that very same fish eight hours later.  So instead of visiting so many churches or museums, I took photos of what we observed in the streets of Palermo.

Buying fish in the morning from one Sicilian...to be cooked that evening by neighboring Sicilian.

Showing us how he debones the fish...yikes, that's a sharp knife.

Just a guy replacing a light bulb on a corner in Palermo...


They washed the strawberries when we bought them so we could eat them immediately.

Three times in three days we passed this guy, seeing him through an open doorway on a sidewalk...in this back kitchen...he rocked meditatively as he rolled the dough, rolled the dough, rolled the dough...

We delivered the fish in the morning to this guy, and he cooked it up for us that evening...

Hannah gives grilling fish a try.

No comments:

Post a Comment